Sandra Sufian receives Honorable Mention for the Outstanding Book Award of 2022
Associate Professor of History and Health Humanities, Susan Sufian, received an Honorable Mention for the Outstanding Book Award of 2022 from the Disability History Association.
Professor Sufian's book, Familial Fitness: Disability, Adoption, and Family in Modern America, is the first social history of disability and difference in American adoption, from the Progressive Era to the end of the twentieth century.
The committee shared the following assessment about Sufian's book. "Sufian’s study...represents intersectional history at its best by unpacking numerous entanglements such as race, eugenics, and epidemics...The narrative is persuasive in showing how dominant views on normality and health in American society have shifted throughout the century." Familial Fitness is a "masterful book...The analysis is clear, compelling, and well substantiated." The book is "a well-argued and rigorously researched history of disability and adoption in the United States. The author shows clear mastery over the legal and systematic structures that dominate Modern American adoption processes."